Uncorrected Proofs/Advance Copies, Introduction

NOTE: This page is from our catalog archives. The listings are from an older catalog and are on our website for reference purposes only. If you see something you're interested in, please check our inventory via the search box at upper right or our search page.

(Note: Four years ago, we issued a catalog of uncorrected proofs and other
advance copies, with a version of this essay on proofs as an introduction.
The essay was later modified and printed in Firsts magazine. We have
revised and updated the essay to include some changes in the preparation
of advance copies, and in trends in collecting, since 1992.)

COLLECTING UNCORRECTED PROOFS

In first edition collecting, "the earlier the better" is the rule.
Originally, first editions were valuable for a pragmatic reason: the printing
plates were composed of soft lead, and after a certain number of impressions
on paper, the sharp edges of the lead would tend to wear down. Later editions
or impressions would be noticeably less clearly printed than the first edition;
when illustrations or maps were involved, this could be a particular problem.
In collecting literary first editions today, this practical reason has become
an article of faith: earlier is better -- the first issue of a book
is always more desirable and more expensive than a later issue. And the proof
of the assumption is that, taken to its logical extreme -- the author's
manuscript -- it is clear that "earliest is best." The "best" copy, or state,
of any given book is the author's own manuscript; any earlier than that and
we are in the realm of metaphysics, not collecting.

While most collectors don't often have a chance to acquire the manuscripts
of their favorite authors' books, they do have ready access to a preliminary
state of the book that precedes the first published edition -- that of
the "uncorrected proof" or "advance reading copy." Publishers have long issued
advance copies of forthcoming books, prior to the book's publication date,
for a number of reasons: they want reviewers and periodicals to have a chance
to read them and schedule reviews to coincide with publication, even given
the long lead times many magazines require for production; they want to get
the opinions of important buyers who are likely to purchase large quantities
of the book if they believe in it -- buyers for the major wholesalers, the
chain bookstores, and the large independent stores around the country; they
want to get early copies to the author's friends and peers -- preferably
well-known ones -- who can give comments about the book that the publisher
can use for promotion, on the dust jacket as "blurbs," in ads, and in the
promotional literature sent out to the news media as press releases.

In the Thirties and Forties, the typical advance copy was a set of typeset
sheets, bound directly into the dust jacket -- that is, identical to
the finished book with the exception of the lack of hard covers. The advantage
to this was that a previewer could see what the book would look like; the
disadvantage was that by the time these copies could be ready, the regular
edition of the book was nearly finished as well: they couldn't be issued
very far in advance of publication. The late Thirties and Forties brought
on the advent of large-scale paperback publication in this country, and some
publishers realized the inherent possibilities of printing up a separate
paperback edition prior to publication, to send out or give away for promotional
purposes. It wasn't until well into the Fifties, however, that the practice
that has become commonplace today -- of sending out an "uncorrected" edition
months before publication -- became widespread. The motivator behind the
movement seems to have been the printer -- Crane Duplicating Service, on
Cape Cod, in Massachusetts -- who sent out brochures to the publishing industry
advocating the cost-effectiveness of their product and suggesting the many
benefits that could accrue to the publisher who had Crane print an advance
edition, which could be used for a range of purposes, both technical and
promotional. Slowly, the idea took hold as one publisher and then another
began to see the benefits of such an edition -- particularly when compared
with the various alternatives: galley sheets for the author for final
corrections; hardcover books for the reviewers, but only right before publication
date; "f & g's" for everyone else -- folded and gathered sheets, an unwieldy
idea but one whose merit was primarily that they could be ready a bit sooner
than bound volumes as review copies. By the Sixties, the major publishers
were routinely doing bound softcover volumes of "uncorrected proofs" -- which,
for a time, were called "Cranes," after the printing company that had proposed
them.

Most of the proofs one sees from the early Sixties are "spiralbound"
-- or, more properly, "ringbound." Often they are on tall sheets, as if they
were taken directly from the publisher's own long galleys. Sometimes they
are printed on the rectos only. Over the years, production values have refined,
passing through a period when "pad-bound" proofs were relatively common,
to the present, when now typical proof copies are as well printed and
almost as well-bound as many trade paperbacks.

As well they should be. The unit cost of proof copies is generally several
times the cost of a printed and bound book, including dust jacket, because
of the economies of scale involved: the set-up and production costs of even
a modest, 5000-copy print run are still much more easily amortized over the
cost of the edition than are the simpler, but still present set-up costs
for a 300-copy run of advance proofs. When bound books averaged $10-12 retail
(in the early Eighties), production costs could safely be figured at $2-
or roughly 1/5 to 1/4 of retail: that was, and still is, the usual publisher's
ratio of production cost to retail price. At the same time, proof copies
typically cost $4-$6 or more to produce, because the smaller print run still
left the printer with a sizable job.

Several things happened as a result: sometimes proofs were done in minuscule
numbers -- in effect, being "hand-bound" in quantities probably no more than
a dozen or two. In other cases, the expense of the proof was seen as
large enough to justify an even greater expense -- "in for a penny, in for
a pound" -- and the print runs were increased and the production values improved,
until you had a flashy, glossy paperback being printed in an edition of 500
or 750, or even 1000, copies, and being given out at every opportunity by
the publisher, in hopes of creating an interest that would justify an increased
first printing of the published "trade" edition (the edition released to
the book trade in general).

No one knows how many copies of a particular proof are done because those
kinds of numbers tend to be well-kept secrets at publishing houses. Too
few will suggest to an author or agent that the publisher isn't really trying
very hard to sell their book; too many might be seen by the bean counters
or others in the company as threatening to compete with actual sales -- flooding
the market with free "product" to the detriment of the final published book.
In the few cases where specific numbers have emerged, they are very small:
Robert Stone's first book, A Hall of Mirrors, was printed in a proof
run of 57 copies, according to the publisher's records; Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five had 39 proof copies printed; one Philip K. Dick
novel, which had potentially libelous text, had 19 copies printed. Generally,
however, even without specific numbers, a broad notion of the cost of print
jobs combined with a reasonable set of assumptions about economies of scale,
suggests the following: that for most plain proofs -- the kind of books we
see in simple, undecorated printed wrappers, with bare-bones publication
data imprinted -- the number of copies almost certainly is less than 500,
and most probably would tend to revolve around a median figure of 200
copies. That's a small enough number that the shipping of the books to
the publisher would not be cost-prohibitive, but that enough copies would
exist for all the legitimate uses -- solicitation of "blurbs," as well as
copies for the author, early reviewers, major bookstore and wholesale buyers,
and regional sales reps.

For the more elaborately produced volumes, with illustrated wrappers, more
thorough promotional material, and often with a more "finished" look to the
typesetting and pagination, the lower range of cost- effectiveness would
likely be found at around 500 copies, and in many cases could be more. At
least one advance reading copy -- Gorky Park, which was the "breakthrough"
book for its author, Martin Cruz Smith -- had a print run of 1500 copies,
and then went back to press for a second printing of another 1000
copies -- all prior to publication. This is probably more common than we
know, but is seldom reported outside of the publishing house in question.
In recent years, changes in printing technology have enabled more lavish
productions on even small print runs: desktop publishing systems, color scanners
and digital technology have meant that more and more proofs can have a polished,
finished look to them; this has clouded the distinction somewhat between
what should rightly be called "uncorrected proofs" and what would more
appropriately be viewed as "advance reading copies." For our purposes,
we have tended to classify all those editions with glossy pictorial wrappers
and polished production values as "advance reading copies," regardless of
what the publisher calls them. Publishers and publisher's reps have a
tendency to use such terms as "proofs" and "galleys" interchangeably, helping
to confuse an already murky issue. We've tried to be reasonably consistent
in labeling the different kinds of advance copies one might encounter.

So why are proofs and advance reading copies collected? They're early
-- that is, earlier than the first edition. As such, they are closer to the
author's manuscript, at least in time, and often in content. The number
of examples of proof or advance reading copies that have textual differences
from the final published book is staggering, and probably most books with
such differences go unnoticed, since nobody has collated them yet. Tim O'Brien's
National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato contained numerous
changes after the proof: O'Brien's own copy of the proof came on the market,
with his corrections by hand, and they were extensive -- whole paragraphs
and pages were deleted or changed, sentences were rewritten, etc. Even without
having the author's own copy, an astute collector or a scholar can often
compare the proof copy of a book with its final form and see the changes
the author (or in some cases, a copy editor) made in between.

They're rare. Quantities of 200 or so are comparable to the issue
size of the collectible limited editions being published by a number of small
publishers around the country today. But those books virtually all go
directly into the rare book market. Proofs, on the other hand, despite
what sometimes seems like a glut of them, do tend to get put to the uses
for which they are designed: they are read, reviewed, marked up and often
wrecked or discarded. Of a print run of 200 copies, it is reasonable to suppose
that the number that finally makes it into the rare book market for a collectible
author will be, at the upper end, 50 copies or so. Even the glossy advance
reading copies, printed in runs of 500 or more, and seemingly ubiquitous,
will turn out to be limited to a couple of hundred that actually make it
into book dealers' stocks and collectors' collections.

So, they're early and they're scarce, the two most important criteria for
determining value in the world of collectible books. Even so, some people
argue against them. They say that "they're ugly." Well, they are; but so
are authors' manuscripts -- piles of marked up typing paper. They say that
they're common and everybody has them. Proofs are usually "common" -- i.e.,
readily available -- for an extremely short window of time surrounding
publication; for anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months before and after publication,
proofs can seem "common" but try finding one much later than that: it's very
hard. Where are all those Cormac McCarthy proofs now that the world knows
who he is? They're gone. People say they're artificially expensive -- just
another chance for a book dealer to gouge a collector who has to have them
for a "complete" collection. But one of the attractive things about collecting
advance copies is that the notion of "completeness" becomes much more
interesting; not every book has a bound proof prepared; but then some
books have proofs, advance reading copies, galleys, f&g's, and more.
Even so, most proofs sell for $25 to $75 for collected authors; the number
of authors whose proofs automatically command $100 or more can almost be
counted on one's fingers -- Updike, McMurtry, Tyler, and a tiny handful of
others. When proofs get expensive is when the window of time has passed during
which they were common, and one tries to go back and, with new retrospective
knowledge, find the early Peter Matthiessen proof, the early Louise Erdrich
proof, the early Sue Grafton proof. By then, demand has so outstripped what
was already a small, and is now an almost nonexistent, supply that prices
can get astronomical. But even so, the typical proof will not cost
much more than three times what the first trade edition of a book sells for,
and will often cost less than that multiple. And yet, they are many, many
times scarcer.

The year 1978 marks a dividing line in proofs' relative scarcity.
Before that time, collecting proofs was practically unheard of because collecting
contemporary literature was not widely done; collecting first editions generally
meant collecting those authors whose literary reputations were already more
or less established. Not only were those authors often from an era when proofs
were much less commonly done, but even if there had been proofs of their
works the "window" of time during which they might have been easily available
had long since passed. That changed when Serendipity Books almost overnight
legitimized the notion of collecting contemporary literature. Serendipity's
legendary Catalogue 38 -- "American Fiction of the 1960s" -- brought a whole
new generation of writers in front of a whole new book buying and collecting
audience. The catalogue was thorough, interesting and engaging; it didn't
have to argue for the collectibility of this new field: it made it self-
evident. And among the many offerings of writers who were, in many cases,
still publishing were the uncorrected proofs of their recent books. Where
the in-print titles would be offered at the list price -- say, $8.95 -- the
uncorrected proof would be offered at, say, $27.50. Clearly, here was something
available, reasonably priced, and much scarcer than the first edition. After
that catalogue, the idea gained wide currency that proofs were collectible
items and many reviewers, writers and publishing house employees began to
squirrel away books that would otherwise have been discarded and to funnel
them toward first edition dealers. And these prices, which seem so reasonable
in Serendipity's 1978 catalog, are even more reasonable today: a typical
new hardcover novel today costs $20-$25; a typical new proof only $35--- less than twice as much, for an item that in most cases is a hundred times
scarcer, or more. When one recognizes the actual scarcity of proof copies,
and how quickly the market can absorb the ones that are in demand, it is
hard to credit any notion that they are commonplace and should be ignored.
Only when a collector's interests are so wide-ranging that collecting proofs
-- i.e., collecting at least two states of each title, the first edition
and an advance copy -- would be economically prohibitive do I discourage
collectors from pursuing them.

The price/scarcity ratio of most proofs is considerably more favorable
to the collector than it is for most modern first editions. Oftentimes
a proof and a scarce first edition will cost almost the same, yet the proof
will be immeasurably scarcer than even a fine copy of the first edition.
Recent trends in collecting modern first editions have emphasized collections
of fine copies of high spots much more than was the case 20 years ago; at
that time, collecting individual authors "in depth" was a more prevalent
mode. It meant building collections that had a higher percentage of less
expensive items than a high spot collection would -- magazine and anthology
appearances and the like -- but also charted unexplored territory more than
do the collections limited to literary high spots. While prices for high
spots have thus gone through the roof in recent years, fueled by this extra
demand, prices for proofs and other somewhat arcane or subtle elements of
an author's ouevre have remained stable or actually dropped slightly
relative to other costs. Either approach, for a collector, can be a good
investment: high spots have accelerated so rapidly that even paying top dollar
today one might well make money selling tomorrow; on the other hand, with
proofs and other more subtle examples of an author's work selling for modest
prices, one can assemble a world-class collection -- and even perhaps a
bibliographically significant one -- of many authors for relatively little
more than the cost of their trade first editions.

When an author becomes collectible enough, and the author's works "age"
enough, it becomes obvious that the proofs are valuable and are desirable
additions to a collection. No one would argue that Hemingway proofs
or Faulkner proofs or Salinger proofs are not collectibles. When they show
up on the market at all, they are usually quickly snapped up for the most
serious collections, whether private or institutional. Proofs by today's
current writers, who are perhaps in line to be tomorrow's Faulkners and
Hemingways, are typically available for as little as $35-$50, giving this
generation of collectors a chance to preserve these scarce and ephemeral
items in a way that is no longer possible for the writers of the past, if
it ever was. No doubt some curmudgeon would have pooh-poohed the idea of
preserving Hemingway or Faulkner proofs when those writers were young,
up-and-coming literary stars. Bad idea.

The first edition market, particularly the modern first edition market,
is fueled by speculation and imagination. That's part of what makes it
fun. It is still possible to follow one's nose and find out, after a while,
that one has discovered a Cormac McCarthy or a Tony Hillerman, years before
the rest of the world catches on. There are many collectors on my mailing
list who have been buying those writers from me since a copy of The Orchard
Keeper could be had for $35, or a copy of The Boy Who Made Dragonfly
was $12.50. Proof copies, if you follow your nose and are willing to take
small risks, can be great investments -- because even if the author doesn't
"hit" and the monetary values don't go sky-high, you've still got a scarce,
unusual, often textually significant version of the author's work, and thus
your collection is that much more special, that much less run-of-the-mill,
and that much more complete.